It’s time to start getting excited, Dear Reader. We’re just a few months out from the unofficial start of our summer festival season. That May Day Bank Holiday weekend means one thing – Live At Leeds. Packed with (literally) hundreds of the best new bands on the planet, it sees one of the country’s most vibrant creative cities turned into a mecca of buzz, hype and awesome live music.
To celebrate, we’re holding a special Live At Leeds takeover. Over the course of the day (28th January 2020, in case you’re coming to this late – Ed), we’ll be bringing you all kinds of stuff from and about the acts playing this year’s event. If you’re going, it’ll help you plan out those all-important spreadsheets. If you’ve not yet picked up your tickets – well, what are you waiting for? You can grab ’em here, right now.
If Dork was putting together our own ‘Top 5 bands to see at Live At Leeds 2020’ list, there’s a very good change Bad Sounds would be on it. They’re incredibly fun. To celebrate their set at this year’s festival, Callum Merrett has put together a playlist of songs featuring great drums – from 60s legends The Who, to 60s legends the Kinks, all the way through to 60s legends The Beatles.
The Who – Can’t Explain
The version from their album’ Live at Leeds’ would be preferable for obvious reasons, but yes, big bad Keith was on fire with this track. I had the DVD ‘the kids are alright’ when I was growing up, and I remember thinking that all those falsetto vocals were very silly. Oh, how the tables have turned.
The Kingsman – Louie Louie
Possibly the best drums ever? We really tried hard to rip off these drums at the end of our song Banger.
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows
All these songs fit together quite well don’t they? I literally can’t comprehend what it would have been like to be a kid in the 60s and hear something like this for the first time. It must have sounded like it came from outer space. I don’t know if I’ve ever been mystified by a song like that. It seems like there’s nothing really shocking in pop music at the minute (and I don’t mean the personas or music videos of pop stars I mean in the music itself).
The Kinks – All Day and All of the Night
I reeeeally didn’t want this to just be 60s pop/rock groups but turns out that era is a goldmine for epic drums.
Led Zeppelin – When The Levee Breaks
There are a lot of stories about the recording of this track. Apparently, John Bonham set his kit up at the bottom of the stairwell of the house the band had rented to record ‘Led Zeppelin IV’, and that’s why they sound so big. It sounds so good that it’s been sampled a bunch of times (famously by the Beastie Boys on their ‘License to Ill’ album).
Black Sabbath – Children of the Grave
Me and Ewan have been going through a bit of a Black Sabbath revival lately, so this one has had some heavy rotation. I used to like sabbath as a kid, but I really have fallen in love with them now (the classic line up – I kinda check out when Ozzy leaves).
Smashing Pumpkins – Geek USA
‘Siamese Dream’ is one of my favourite albums of all time (Top 5 without doubt). I heard an interview with Billy Corgan saying that he’d been trying his whole career to sound like Tony Iommi (from Black Sabbath) so that ties in quite nicely with the previous track don’t you think? Oh and the drums.
Queens Of The Stone Age – Song For The Dead
Youtube this for endless drummers attempting to play this like Dave Grohl did. Another favourite album of all time for me. I think sonically it’s the first album that ever made question how you could make a band sound interesting purely by the way that you record the parts. It’s heavily influenced the way I think about recording music. The drums on this track are all on one side except for the intro and outro. Normally a cardinal sin in my book, but somehow they made it ok.
Live At Leeds will take place on 2nd May, visit liveatleeds.com for more info.
